Directgov, has launched a new Flash animated site for children aged
5-11. DirectgovKids
welcomes our future generation of civil servants (else why else would they be visiting Directgov?) into a self-contained little world full of virtual buildings to explore, each representing a part of
government – so introducing, says the blurb, "important ideas about
citizenship, democracy, and political participation".
Children’s Minister Beverley Hughes proclaimed "This is the first time children in the UK have been communicated with
directly by Government through an online site".
The site is quite well constructed, with lots of animated games to play, though I don’t think the makers of Sim City have got anything to worry about just yet. I thought they could perhaps have introduced a bit more realism into the relationships between communities and government by introducing some elements from Doom3, but perhaps that’s part of a later release.
To pick up on an editorial from Public Sector Forums…" after all, which five-year-old wouldn’t tear themselves away from Hungry Hippos or their PlayStation 2 for a heated debate on ‘Sustainable Schools’? In the words of Eric Morecambe…"there’s no answer to that"!
I presented today on the topic of Communities of Practice for the launch of the Progress through Partnership programme, sponsored and supported by the South East Employers (SEEMP). The Progress through Partnership (PtP) is a peer led programme with the objective of creating an environment for knowledge sharing and identifying examples of best practice and innovation for Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs)
The programme includes the launch of a new portal site with a link to the CoP platform.
The idea of using a CoP for this programme of work was well received by most of the audience, and particularly when I explained that these communities were not hierarchical and were not workflow driven. The issue of hierarchy seemed to resonate most with delegates from district authorities, who appear to have a lesser voice in the LSPs than members from unitary authorities. It will be interesting to see how the inherent flat structure of a CoP will work in this particular programme. A case of ‘watch this space’ I think!
I’ve covered this before in a previous post, but if ayone is seeking a cheap (as in free) but powerful photo editing application, take a look at Picnik. They’ve just released version 11, which has a whole host of new features.
I picked this up courtesy of Beth Kanter’s blog, regarding a recent survey conducted in the education sector on use of Web 2.0 tools. The survey summary analysis is available under a Creative Commons license from David White, JISC funded ‘SPIRE’ project 2007 Survey. I was particularly interested in the data on the ratio between contributors to lurkers for on-line communities, an area I’ve previously commented on (Re the "1% Rule"). The survey reveals a much higher proportion (20%) who regularly contribute to social networking sites (e.g. Flickr, YouTube etc.), which I suspect might be skewed due to the demographic (education sector plus majority of respondents under 21?). It certainly doesn’t reflect my own experience in setting up communities of practice in the public sector (local government) where it’s closer to the 1% rule.
It’s difficult to avoid making generalisations on a survey of this type, but it was also apparent that even within this survey demographic, there was a remarkable lack of knowledge about Web 2.0 social book-marking tools, looking at the high proportion of respondents who said they had never heard of del.icio.us or stumbleupon, and a strange inconsistency between the high proportion of respondents who had never heard of a wiki, and the relatively small proportion who had never heard of wikipedia. I would have thought they could have deduced some connection from the wikipedia name. Ho hum!
Download online_tool_use_surveysummary.pdf
Dave Snowden’s post caught my eye today. (I’m interpreting Weltanschauung as meaning ‘world view’, or ‘accepted opinion’ here).
Sensible (and deep) perspective on the social computing ‘revolution’ (my word not Dave’s), as you’d probably expect from this renowned thinker. Difficult to do justice to Dave’s posting in a few words here, though a couple of points I’d like to note:
I too dislike the term ‘Enterprise 2.0’ (much in the same way as I dislike Web 2.0 – and I’m still not entirely sure if they’re the same!); social computing is far more descriptive and takes us away from the concept of giving release numbers to what is in effect a gradual (evolutionary) change, predicated on human behaviour. And yes, I have noted this contradicts the reference to ‘revolution’ in my first sentence, but I do get the impression from various vendors’ marketing releases that they believe it is a revolution.
The other point is (again) in support of the Dave Snowden’s statement that
“….you have to get people enthused, get the early adopters to use the tools. It’s a lot harder letting things evolve, than designing something based on an ideal approach….”
It is indeed difficult letting things evolve, because this takes time and despite the well-worn KM cliché of learning before, during and after, managers want instant (and perfect) solutions. The ideal solution doesn’t become apparent until users have worked out where the shortcuts are and how to avoid the pitfalls and problems. Anyone who thinks they can design an ideal system from a purely theoretical paradigm must be….well, Einstein. Maybe it happens, but not very often.
I’ve always been an advocate of starting off with something quick and dirty – and yes, probably imperfect, but by observing how it’s being used and listening to user’s feedback you can develop something approaching an ideal system. Of course you’ll never quite reach the utopian position of having a ‘perfect’ system, because that’s what evolution is all about. Change is good, provided we’re learning from it.
So, my own crusade is to find the (social computing) early adopters in the local government sector. Quite difficult when you have a fairly institutionalised mentality, where freedom of thought and action has been actively discouraged over many (many) years. The good news is, there are some out there, and the fact that in less than 6 months we’ve managed to encourage over 900 users to join one or more of the 24 or so on-line communities of practice on the IDeA collaborative workspace does give me some encouragement. In fact, I’m enthused about it!
I’ve picked up on a couple of blogs recently referring to
Ning, a platform for creating individual social networks or
communities of practice.
It allows you to have your own site to which people can sign up and
leave blog posts, have forum discussions, upload photos and videos and
publish RSS feeds. The most recent commentary was from Dave Briggs over at
LGNewmedia.
I sometimes wonder whether it would be preferable to abandon the bespoke work we’re doing with the IDeA CoP paltform
and use an off the shelf development environment such as Ning. Not sure
yet what the right answer is, since I also have to ensure the IDeA CoP
solution is fully integrated with other (legacy) platforms, such as the
IDeA knowledge web site. I can see that the technology trend – call it Web 2.0, mashups, Ajax or whatever – is bringing sophisticated content integration and publishing tools within the reach of anyone with a broadband connection.
Scoble has a couple of videos up about Ning if you want to know more.
Bruce Mason over at TNN – Tags/Networks/Narrative has some interesting things to say about folksonomies, taxonomies and ‘collabularies’ (I choke each time I mention that word!). I’ve also learnt a new term – ‘feral hypertext’ – now I like that!
I picked this item up from Beth Kantor’s blog who references a report by JISC on Web 2.0 technologies (http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/techwatch/tsw0701b.pdf)
I have to say that, on the whole, the report gives a very good introduction to Web 2.0, and provides some context to the hyperbole surrounding this topic. It gives covers quite a wide spectrum of topics, from html, the invention of the Web by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the long tail, the development of social networking and publishing tools such as wikis and blogs and technologies such as Ajax, Microformats.
My only criticism is the seemingly compelling and pretentious need for academia to continually invent new terms (jargon) for what is quite often a simple task or process. I’ve had enough problems getting people I encounter in the public sector to understand what blogs and wikis are. I’ve tried to avoid using the term ‘folksonomy’ where possible, preferring ‘tagging’ instead, which most people seem to understand.
And then I come across the term ‘collabulary’, which has now been introduced into the English language because we’re misusing the term ‘folksonomy’. There is (apparently) a distinction to be made between a folksonomy (a collection of tags created by an individual for their own personal use) and a collabulary (a collective vocabulary)
The term folksonomy is generally acknowledged to have been coined by Thomas Vander Wal.
According to Vander Wal, folksonomy tagging is done in a social environment (shared and open) and is not collaborative and it is not a form of categorisation. He makes the point that tagging done by one person on behalf of another is not folksonomy and that the value of a folksonomy is derived from people using their own vocabulary in order to add explicit meaning to the information or object they are consuming (either as a user or producer).
So, if I’ve understood this correctly, information I tag for myself is a folksonomy, but if I want to share my tags with a community, I’m contributing to a collabulary. Well, I for one will not be introducing this term into the local government communities I’m presently engaged with. I’m trying to demystify much of the present jargon that Web 2.0 practitioners spout, any and all of which can act as barriers to the use and adoption of social media tools. Whether I’m tagging for myself or tagging in a wider collaborative sense, I’m just adding labels to things I want to be able to find again. I don’t really care whether it’s a folksonomy or a collabulary, and neither should the users of Web 2.0 tools.
Download what_is_web_2.0 (Jisc).pdf
I came across Picnik – a web site providing free photo editing and special effects. The site is still in Beta, and some of the creative tool tabs are annotated with ‘Coming Soon". However, the photo editing tools all work, the interface is quite slick, all photo editing is done within the browser and there is seamless integration with Flickr. There’s also no sign of any advertising (yet).
For anyone considering purchasing a photo editing application – don’t! Try this first.
I came across the idea of Action Oriented communities of practice on the Anecdote blog by Shawn Callahan. It refers to the point in the CoP life cycle when the group really benefits from creating tangible things designed
to improve the members’ practice. This point occurs sometime after the
early days of formation after the members have worked out their domain,
and they know who’s participating, how people get on with one another,
and how members communicate.
The article refers to a five part approach designed to coordinate action within a CoP:
- general discussion
- discussion tables
- a list of possible projects
- small groups (ideally 3 people) working on things together
- database of projects
The community makes progress by hosting discussion tables and
encouraging active and robust conversation that leads people to suggest
things that would be good to do as a community. The list of projects
grows and some are tackled based on the energy and enthusiasm of
members. The process of undertaking these projects in small groups
creates new relationships which in turn creates new conversations and
new ideas for future discussion tables.
I’m inclined to try this approach for the Facilitator’s Community of Practice for the IDeA, which I co-mentor. I was slightly disappointed at the response to a recent forum entry I posted within the CoP, asking what members wanted to get out of the community, i.e. their needs and objectives. There were only three responses from a total membership of fifty. However, this did trigger the suggestion for a meeting of the members, and I’m in the process of putting an agenda together now. I think the action oriented approach the Shawn describes in his blog would be perfect for this occasion, and I will put it to the CoP members for their views. I’m hoping though, I’ll get more then three responses!
